In a recent video recounting the birth of Fanta soft drinks, Coca-Cola explains that its German operation had trouble getting cola-making ingredients to the country’s bottling plants 75 years ago, leading the bottlers to dream up a beverage they could make without Coca-Cola syrup. Perhaps Coke was hoping people wouldn’t do the math and realize that the reason for the syrup scarcity had a little something to do with the Nazis. [More]

When you need to distract someone in order to steal money, simply use what you have at hand. A woman in Germany allegedly stole cash from a pharmacy earlier this week after she distracted employees. Police say that she distracted the employees by whipping out a boob and squirting milk at them. [More]

You can’t really blame reader Nathan for thinking that Beck’s beer comes from Germany. Until just a few years ago, it was an import. Then InBev, the brand’s owner, acquired Anheuser Busch, and with that lots of breweries in the United States. Breweries where they might as well make InBev-owned brands, since most consumers won’t be able to tell the difference. Or so they thought. [More]

Uber is a smartphone app that connects people in need of a ride with drivers willing to accept money in exchange for rides. Or it’s a fancied-up taxi dispatch service that’s out to destroy the world’s livery services. What it is depends on who you ask. Germany’s taxi drivers asked the Frankfurt Regional Court, which this week allowed Uber to do business in Germany again. [More]

Yesterday, we shared the news that ride-sharing service Uber had been banned in Germany. The company’s service that lets people summon a limo with a smartphone was fine, but the peer-to-peer, lower-cost UberPop service had to stop accepting passengers under a temporary injunction. A strange thing happened when this story hit the news, though: people in Germany thought that this UberPop thing sounded like a great idea, and started hailing rides. [More]

When your company’s goal is to disrupt the entire livery industry, current taxi and other car-for-hire operators and livery regulators are not going to like you very much. The idea of a car-sharing service that connects non-professional drivers with strangers in need of rides horrifies regulators and existing professional drivers, and now UberPop (similar to UberX elsewhere) has been banned in Germany under penalty of a €250,000 ($328,225) fine. [More]

Fracking — the process of obtaining natural gas and other resources through the use of hydraulic fracturing — is a controversial and divisive issue, with proponents claiming it is a clean and safe way to tap needed fuel sources while opponents say fracking wreaks havoc on the environment and ecosystem. In Germany, some of the biggest names in beer have joined together to ask the German government to stop fracking there until it can be proven that it won’t taint the groundwater — and by extension, German beer. [More]

As mass-market food products go, chocolate-hazelnut spread and noted health food Nutella is pretty expensive per ounce. So it’s not really surprising that thieves made off with more than $20,000 worth of the stuff in the theft on seven pallets, from a parked semi-trailer truck in Germany. [More]

US markets fell 200 points on news that Greece could be on the precipice of defaulting on its debt. Wait, haven’t they been talking about that all summer? Yes, but this comes after the Germans, key players in resolving the crisis, are now publicly saying that Greece may default in a messy way. [More]

German sprouts are not the cause of the deadly e.coli outbreak that has killed 22 and sickened over 2,000, according to initial tests of samples from a farm that a German agriculture minister had earlier named as the epicenter. The retraction is only the latest in a series of confusing finger-pointings and “cucumber slurs,” and has left European consumers afraid to eat a salad. [More]

A virulent strain of antibiotic-resistant E.coli has left 18 dead in Europe, left over 1,800 sick, and touched off a continent-wide scare against all produce, suspected to be the source of the infection. [More]

DHL is trying out a new program called bring.Buddy where regular people can pick up and deliver packages along their daily route that they’d be traveling anyway. In return, the recruits earn free train tickets, coupons and carbon offset credits. And, of course, badges. The goal is to reduce costs and carbon emissions within dense urban environments. [More]

We know times are tough and many of you are looking for work. So even if you haven’t given much thought to the idea of managing a bordello in Berlin, now might be your chance to get in on the ground floor of a (somewhat) recession-proof industry… in Germany. [More]

A bank robber in Germany was so angered by inaccuracies given by police and reported in the newspapers that he felt compelled to send them indignant e-mails with his corrections. And while his correspondence might have served to clear up the public record of his robbery, they also led cops right to his doorstep. [More]

Some German’s art project is to engage in “urban camouflage” by creating three different ghillie suits made of bulk IKEA items: piles of dishcloths, boxes, and shopping bags. Then he goes and “hides” out in the open inside the IKEA, blending in with his surroundings and only disturbing shoppers when he moves. Hilarious, brilliant! Here are the videos so you get the full effect: